Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
26 June 2022
Most of the week has been taken up with politics and war, and I don’t think that’s going to change very much, but even so we still have to get on with our lives. I’ve managed to find a few other things to look at this week starting with London’s brand new deep level railway, the Elizabeth Line. We also look at the nature of grief and refer you to a piece about the political effect of the US Roe v Wade decision on other countries.
Moving on we look at a couple of interesting engineering projects, AI and health, some predictions that ‘Wired’ magazine made about the 21st Century in 1997 (uncanny), and a new way to fight invasive plants.
Pictures has some video on a flash fire and there are two interesting quotes...
The Scanner section offers a selection of URLs pointing to material on music copyright, new UK cookie law proposals, human echolocation, IE to bite the dust, celebrity inventors, ‘proper’ English (Pah! -AL), nuclear reactor waste, and finally Apple-EU-USB-C...
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue 3 July
Credits: Thanks to Fi Craig for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down and for editing it for spelling, grammar, etc.
Essays:
The big thing in London over the last month or so, politics aside, has been the launch of Transport for London’s Elizabeth line – aka Crossrail. Most of the stuff about it has been about the technical issues – how it was built, what it looks like, how fast it is, and who actually funded it. What is missing in all this is the economic and socio-political dimension.
Happily, that’s now been rectified by a brilliant piece in New Left Review’s Sidecar blog. It’s well worth a read, whether you are a Londoner or not.
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/crossed-rails
When my wife, Barbara, died, I, like many other people in that position, had difficulty coping with the grief it caused. On of the things that helped me deal with it was an article in ‘Psyche’ explaining grief as learning process. Having grief explained as a learning process didn’t stop grieving, but it really did help me to understand what was going on in my head and cope better.
https://psyche.co/ideas/seeing-grieving-as-learning-explains-why-the-process-takes-time
There’s plenty of material on, reviews of, and predictions of the future in the USA following the Roe v Wade decision. ‘The Conversation’, though, takes a look at what the implications of the ruling are for reproduction politics in other countries, including Italy and The Irish Republic.
https://theconversation.com/roe-v-wade-overturned-what-abortion-access-and-reproductive-rights-look-like-around-the-world-184013
Engineering:
Now this is one of the most amazing pieces of civil engineering I’ve ever heard of! Tell me, what do you do when the entrance and facade of a 100 year old theatre is in the way of where you want the main entrance to the stores and office you built around the theatre?
Oh! And by the way, the inside foyer of the theatre is legally protected.
Give up?
Well you use jacks to raise it 30 feet into the air, and embed it in the new building!
Take a look at this video showing it being done and explaining how it is done. Fabulous!
https://boingboing.net/2022/06/19/how-a-100-year-old-ny-theater-is-being-lifted-30-straight-up.html
And while we are on the topic of engineering, I’d like to draw your attention to an invention that could well have a dramatic effect on cities and help with controlling climate change in the future. It seems that four students at the American University in Cairo have managed to produce ‘glow in the dark’ concrete.
It works by absorbing sunlight during the day and emitting light at night. Given the massive amounts of energy that it takes to illuminate streets at night, then even if the final product is more expensive than regular concrete, it likely to be well worth it!
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/06/egyptian-students-develop-luminescent-concrete
Health:
Here is a question for you – Can AI be used in medicine?
Substack site asked Metafact who have verified experts on hand to look into this for them. All six experts replied ‘yes’ and gave their reasons. Fine, but I would have found it more convincing if they had also asked six verified medical practitioners for their views on the question! In the meantime here is what the AI experts said...
https://metafact.substack.com/p/can-ai-be-used-in-medicine?s=r
History:
And here’s an interesting little bit of history. It turns out that in 1997 ‘Wired Magazine’ predicted 10 things that could go wrong in the 21st Century.
Did they get it right? Well, why not take a look and see for yourself.
https://www.openculture.com/2021/11/wired-predicts-the-troubles-of-the-2020s-back-in-1997.html
Invasive plants:
Any of you that have come across Japanese Knotweed, or indeed any other similar ‘invasive’ plants will know how difficult it is to get rid of the stuff. Usually you have to make repeated applications of pretty nasty chemicals. Now it seems that there is a non-chemical solution – electrocution. London Transport has been trying it out with good results. Take a look at the story on Ian Visits
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/tfl-testing-a-chemical-free-way-of-eliminating-japanese-knotweed-53274/
Pictures:
I’ve a truly stunning little piece of footage for you to look at in pictures this week – it’s what I assume is security camera footage of a fire starting in a factory aluminium extrusion line. Personally, I think the guy dashing to the control console to pick something up is out of his mind! See for yourself.
https://boingboing.net/2022/06/22/catastrophic-failure-at-an-aluminum-extrusion-line-is-putting-it-mildly.html
Quotes:
Here’s a nice sharp quote from George Bernard Shaw:
“We learn from history, that we learn nothing from history.”
Douglas Hofstadter of ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach’ fame has been thinking about AI and contributed an essay to ‘The Economist’:
The highlight is a summary of a conversation that David Bender and Hofstadter had with an advanced neural-net model named GPT-3. Here is an excerpt:
Dave & Doug: What’s the world record for walking across the English Channel?
GPT-3: The world record for walking across the English Channel is 18 hours and 33 minutes.
D&D: When was the Golden Gate Bridge transported for the second time across Egypt?
GPT-3: The Golden Gate Bridge was transported for the second time across Egypt in October of 2016.
Via ACCU General mailing list
Scanner:
Why Ed Sheeran’s court victory sounds good for the music industry
https://theconversation.com/why-ed-sheerans-court-victory-sounds-good-for-the-music-industry-180997
Cookie consent crumbles under fresh UK data law proposals
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/17/cookies_crumble_in_uk_data/
Humans can learn to ‘Echolocate’ in just 10 weeks, experiment shows
https://www.sciencealert.com/most-humans-can-learn-how-to-echolocate-in-just-10-weeks-experiment-shows
Microsoft to retire Internet Explorer browser and redirect users to Edge
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/15/microsoft-to-retire-internet-explorer-browser-and-redirect-users-to-edge
The return of America’s celebrity inventor
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/the-return-of-americas-celebrity-inventor-180979144/
Ofsted has been dictating what “proper English” is – here’s why that’s a problem
https://theconversation.com/ofsted-has-been-dictating-what-proper-english-is-heres-why-thats-a-problem-176742
Small nuclear reactors produce ‘35x more waste’ than big plants [Or not, depending which side of the fence you are on – AL]
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/02/nuclear_reactors_waste/
Tough news for Apple as EU makes USB-C common charging port for most electronic devices
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/07/eu_usb_c_common_charger/
Footnote:
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
26 June 2022
Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist (among other things), the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
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